Orchid Trees

I just love the Hong Kong Orchid Tree.

Enough Rain?

The rainy season is upon us.

Lotus Season

The Hong Kong Botanical Gardens did a really nice display in honor of Lotus season.

Don't Ever Try to Sneak in my House

I'm not afraid of any stinkin' cockroachs!!

D & D in Family Bar

We hardly ever see Denis' sister Donna in the states, we have to get together when she travels on business to Hong Kong. Here they are toasting their sucess in the Intercontinental Hotel bar...known as the Durgin family bar to our HK friends. The view of Victoria Harbour is magnificent here (so is our tab).

No More Dragons in Sai Kung

Part of the Buddha birthday festivities included a dragon parade to scare all the dragons out of Sai Kung for the coming year. Lettuce or flowers are thrown on the ground in offering to the dragon and the drums beat loudly to scare off the the dragons. What's really scary is that they don't block car traffic during the parade, cars still try to weave their way around the parade.

Opera in Operation

Once the opera house was open for business the vendors set up including roasted corn-on-the-cob. I think this is the chinese version of a county fair as a few weeks later the same opera house was constructed in the next town down the road. I noticed they had lots of rules for those attending the opera

These independent fishermen bring their catch each day to the harbor wall in Sai Kung and people comes from all over to buy their fresh fish. When you point out which fish you want the fishermen gut it and descale right there.

Cinco de Mayo here in Hong Kong is Buddha's Birthday. Our town goes all out and is setting up a temporary opera house. They blocked off a couple streets and a parking lot and are erecting this building. They sarted this just 5 days before I took this picture. To get an idea of the scale of this building look for the couple of men on the roof. I understand this is just for the opera next weekend and then it will be desassembled. They put it up 3 times a year for different festivals.
The entire structure is bamboo held together with strips of plastic wrapping the joints.

These sampans are my new transportation to go to town for shopping. They line up at the harbor wall just outside our building and you just go out, hop on and they take you across the harbor to town for the equivalent of 75 cents US. So from where we live now, when I want to go to Hong Kong Island (the big city) I take the sampan to the mini bus to the subway train. Takes only about an hour and is often faster and less hassle than trying to drive.

I've joined the Hong Kong Garden Society and it's the season that everyone shows off their gardens. So to gain ideas for my roof-top design I've been visiting other gardens. One lady was into recycling odd objects to use as planters on her roof. Here is an old waterbed frame she put a pool liner in and has created a home-made water feature.

We've finally moved from our service apartment (hotel) into our own flat. We are on the third floor with no elevator and the stairwell is not air conditioned. I hope this will take off a few pounds. The good thing is that the third floor is the top floor so our unit comes with the roof-top terrace. The owner who lived here (a German without a green thumb) did nothing with the roof-top so I have a blank slate to create my own oasis. I plan to become the queen of container gardening. Our building is right next to the harbor in the old fishing village of Sai Kung. This is where the seafood restaurants are that you go and pick your dinner out of the live tanks. There are a lot of westerners in the community so the local grocery store actually has a Mexican food section and there are plenty of non-asian restaurants and British pubs.

I haven't taken any interior shots of the flat because we haven't furnished/decorated yet. We have a bed and a sofa so far. Just got a couple bedroom night stands and lamp so we're making progress. Laine will help when she comes back with me for the summer.

Here I am with my Stitch & Bitch group in Macau. Macau is about a 1 hour ferry ride from Hong Kong and was a Portuguese settlement until it was handed back to China in 1998. It is famous for it's casinos, but we never went to those. We went sightseeing checking out the Portuguese architecture and their very cool Modern Art Museum.

We stayed at the Banyan Tree resort in Phuket in a villa that had our own private garden. The Thai people really know how to garden.

Easter weekend here is a 4-day work holiday so Denis and I escaped to Phuket, Thailand, a 3 hour plane ride away. This is wherethe tsunami struck, but the tourist areas have recouperated quickly. Here is our favorite beach bar and our favorite beach dogs.

For spring break Laine and her friend Maria came to visit. Laine found it so interesting she is coming back for a longer stay over summer. Here we are at the Wong Tai Sin temple worshiping with fortune sticks. You shake the can until one fortune stick falls out. It has your lucky number that you can take to a fortune teller who will then tell you your fortune. The kids were there for a field trip. If they'd had orange billed hats they'd look just like rubber duckies.

The last week of March is the Hong Kong Flower Show. Here are some scenes.

It's easy to go into sensory overload from the bombardment of signage in Hong Kong, but ya just gotta read the signs because they can be so entertaining. I thought my friends back at NAMG who work on the Cooking and Gardening magazines might enjoy the info provided by the sign about "Tomatoes." The other sign is in a shopping mall not far from Denis' office.

For the best shopping deals Hong Kongers like to head over the border into China to Shenzhen. This is only about a 45 minute train ride from our house. The key is to go with someone who knows the ropes and can get you into the hiddens markets for the best knock-off items. I went with my stitch & bitch buddies we had directions from someone to go to the shopping mall just over the border and find shop 417 and ask to see the backroom. So we did this and the person in the store contacted someone via walkie-talkie who came to the store. He looked us over to see if he thought we looked ok to take to the hidden room. He then watched the hallway outside the store and when he determined the coast was clear he led us across the hallway to a store that looked like a closed tatoo parlor. He unlocked the door pushed us in and locked the door behind us. Ahead of us was a 15 x 15' room encircled with shelves floor to ceiling full of purses. When we were done shopping a person in the store called the person in the hall on the walkie-talkie who unlocked the door and let us out.

Next we had directions to an underground DVD supplier. We had to find our way to a different part of town and find a building that looked like it was all mobile phone shops, across the street from Pizza Hut. We found it and then had to find the stairs to the basement. These ended up being crumbing cement (no signs and no lights other than the sunlight filtering in). The basement was unfinished but a small DVD store was set up in a corner. We again asked to see the selection in the back room and again we were eyed to determine if we were safe to let in. We looked shady enough so they took us to a different part of the basement and pushed aside a sheet of plywood so we could get into the back room where the 5 of us bought over 300 DVD's for $1 USD each. Of course I wasn't able to take photos of any of these secret places, but I thought the China border crossing was interesting.

How many of you have seen or read Memoirs of a Geisha in which the girl must go to school to learn the talents of a Geisha? Well, since coming to Hong Kong I have been going to classes to learn the talents of a Tai Tai (Chinese wife). I took a series of 5 classes in Ikebana, the art of Japanese flower arranging. And I've had 3 classes in pearls so that I can evaluate, grade, string and design pearl jewelry. I took these photos with my camera phone, so they aren't that good. The photo of me with the pearls doesn't look like me at all.